Twenty years ago this weekend, central Georgia experienced the massive flooding from Tropical Storm Alberto. The current 24 hour rainfall record for Georgia, 21.10 inches, fell in Americus on July 6, 1994 during the storm. The extreme rainfall caused tremendous devastation in Macon, Montezuma, Albany and other areas in central and southwest Georgia. Here are a couple of stories about the flood:
WGXA television Macon retrospective
Remember, tropical storms can cause as much damage as hurricanes if they stall out. A rough rule of thumb for calculating the rainfall from a tropical storm is to take 100 and divide it by the forward speed of the storm (not the speed of the winds around the center of circulation). Thus a storm moving at 3 miles per hour has a potential of dropping 100/3=33 inches of rainfall as the storm moves over an area.
